A THOUSAND WORDS - Alex Waterhouse-Hayward's blog on pictures, plants, politics and whatever else is on his mind.

The Human Factor

Sunday, June 28, 2015

Ivette Hernández

As I must soon thin out my book collection (not a collection
but a lifelong accumulation) I glance at my book shelves and the piles of books
on the floor (Douglas Coupland would approve of that home design choice) I know
it will be tough.

But some of them are out and out simple. I cannot part
with them. One of them is a beautifully rebound in leather by a French book
maker in Mexico of my mother’s The Power and the Glory.

If any of you have ever been in Mexico you might
understand that light is special in the country. One of the best
cinematographers in the world was the Mexican Gabriel Figueroa (1907-1997). He
worked in Hollywood, too especially with John Huston and John Ford. But one of
my favourite films of all time (with luminous b+w photography by Figueroa) is
John Ford’s, 1947, The Fugitive which
was the renaming of Greene’s The Labyrinthine
Ways (US title) and ThePower and the Glory (the British title).

The film stars Henry Fonda, Dolores del Río (!!), Ward
Bond and Pedro Armendáriz, perhaps the best Mexican actor of all time. In The
Fugitive he plays a most scary police chief who is looking for the priest
during the prohibition for saying mass in the 20s.

I photographed Ivette Hernández, who hails from León,
Guanajuato for a couple of years imposing on her (and she imposed on me) our
nostalgia for Mexico, its ways, its scenery, etc.

Here (even though I have a superb version in b+w) I want
to show you my impression of Dolores del Río in The Fugitive. Ivette is wearing
my mother’s red shawl before I had any idea of my red shawl project here. The
clouds in the background are fake. I projected them against my studio wall with
a focusing spotlight and a cloud gobo.